Impressionism vs. Post-Impressionism Impressionism vs. Post

This paper will explore impressionism vs. post-impressionism including the influences of each on each other and society, and the effects of each other on the 19th century. The paper will ascertain how one period revived or continued the style and characteristics of the other, or how one period originated in reaction to the other. Impressionist paintings tended to focus less on detail and more on making impressions of form and figure, as the name implies. The brush strokes were less inclined to add detail and structure or order. Post-impressionists considered this trivial, and created artistic work that was decidedly more expressive according to some; more organized and structured, the Post-Impressionist movement could be best described as a response to the Impressionist movement. Some focused on methods including Pointillism, or the use of dots of color, whereas others used bright fresh colors used by Impressionists but reduced objects into basic shapes or structures while maintain more order than what one might see in an impressionist painting.

Impressionism

Like post-impressionism, this style of art originated in France in the late 19th century, as a result of state controlled governments (Brettell, 2000). Artists using this style of artistry tended to favor independent art exhibitions, painting landscapes that were contemporary in nature, favoring scenes depicting modern life, bourgeois leisure and recreational pictures...

They looked down on historical figures and mythological narratives as subjects for artistic endeavors, and paid much attention to the effects of atmosphere, movement and light within their artistry (Brettell, 2000). The artistry of the impressionist movement was much like the break Realists began by emphasizing the manner in which paint looked on the surface of the canvas, using tonal modeling and cropped perspectives (Tinterow and Loyrette, 1994). Impressionists often painted in the open, using palettes of pure colors. The impressionists included painters working between 1860 and roughly 1900 including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and August Renoir among others, many of whom revolutionized painting (Tinterow and Loyrette, 1994, Brettell, 2000).
Post-impressionism described a movement that opposed impressionism that began sometime around the 1880s, and included many notable painters including Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cezanne (Sweeny, 1996). These painters rejected the naturalistic light and color patterns used by impressionists, instead favoring symbolism in their paintings, and formal order (Sweeny, 1996). Thus, post-impressionism may be defined as a response to impressionist works (Tinterow and Loyrette, 1994). Post-impressionist works were ordered, structured, and stressed the artificial nature of a picture; although, much like the impressionists, the post-impressionists believed that they could derive color independent from the emotional…